On the evening of April 9, Glaze‘s guitarist Stephen parked his van in his apartment’s garage. The van had just taken a long trek back from North Texas, where the band had just played a show. When he returned back to the vehicle later that night, the van had been broken into and all of the band’s gear (minus a bass amp) had been stolen. Below is a list of all the gear they are now missing.

To help replace and recover the gear, the band is asking for some monetary help to get back on their show feet again. So far the band has already raised almost $600 of their $5000 goal ($50 from the Mayor himself). They said they’re astounded by the amount of support they’ve received and, even though this did happen, they are happy to be in such a supportive community.

To show your own support, you can donate to their GoFundMe page and share this story. Hell, if you do it for any reason at all, do it so they’re ready to play our show on May 12 at Sidewinder!

Hey hey, we’ve heard that one of the best fests in Texas, Hangover Fest in San Antonio, is gonna be extra dope this year. Today tickets went on sale for only $25, all you gotta do is have a little faith that they’re gonna give you a line-up that blows your mind. We got the faith — it’s Burger Records and Fuzzland.

Last year’s fest included greats like Bleached, Shannon and the Clams, Mean Jeans and more, so you can bet it’s gonna be good.

It looks like the Red River Cultural District is getting some new signage soon, showing off a logo for the venue-packed area of town that has had some epic highs and lows this year. We like the design of the posters and we’re glad that part of town is getting some new material to draw attention to its togetherness. We hope that this is also just a tease of larger civic attention for the Red River Cultural District, particularly since we’ve also heard that tension between Austin’s festival planners and neighborhood groups is heating up. Anyway, keep your eyes peeled for the new posters and for more Red River Cultural District news in the coming months.

Earlier today, Merge Records announced that they had signed hot shit local act A Giant Dog, bringing the Austin quintet into the same pantheon of indie rock royalty as Arcade Fire, Neutral Milk Hotel and AGD’s BFFs Spoon. We are of course very excited by this announcement, especially since it comes with the added bonus of a confirmation that the band’s next album will be hitting shelves in early 2016, according to Merge. For fans of all things Sabrina Ellis, this is shaping up to be a pretty great fourth quarter, with her other project Sweet Spirit releasing their debut album Cokomo on Friday. Sweet Spirit are currently housed on local label Nine Mile Records but given how close Ellis and company continue to get with the Merge crew, perhaps Sweet Spirit will be joining A Giant Dog on the roster before too long. In the meantime, congrats to A Giant Dog! And here’s our favorite video of theirs to celebrate with:

We’re still getting used to Periscope, a kind of Twitch-like service for music and talk instead of games and n00b attacks, but we like how some artists are using to let fans catch unique, one off performances. That’s what Black Market Pluto are doing tonight, August 6th, at 9:30 p.m. CST, bringing their roster together to perform their upcoming label mixtape live. BMP acts like Bateau, Suicide Notes, HADES and even legendary Austin hip hop titan MC Overlord will be taking part, and all you have to do to check it out is follow @blackmarketpluto on Periscope. In the meantime, check out this track Bateau and HADES did for a remix competition local hotshot Eric Dingus is doing:

Our friends in Three Bones shared some bad news yesterday, writing that they came home to discover that their gear had been stolen. The band is currently finishing up a residency at Scoot Inn, the second to last event is actually going down tonight with Anthony DaCosta and Linen Closet, which makes it even more unfortunate that their guitars have disappeared. If you have any info on the missing equipment, Three Bones urges you to call the police.

Burgeoning Austin superstar (and frequent BestOf pick here at Ovrld) Shakey Graves announced today that he would be making his debut appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman on February 13th. The folk singer recently went electric with his heavily hyped and beloved 2014 album And the War Came, with that album’s single previously landing the Austin-based singer-songwriter on Conan:

Shakey is following on this energy with a lengthy tour, with his last Austin date coming on January 31st at Bass Concert Hall, with a stop at Gruen Hall on February 20th (his previous Gruen date on February 13th of course being rescheduled to make room for the Letterman performance). Full tour info for Shakey is below:

SXSW sent out the new batch of confirmations for next year’s Music event and there’s a lot to be excited about already. Personally, the announcement that has me the most excited is the news that Gang of Four will be taking part, joining UK legends Swervedriver, who were announced last month. Of the newer groups, Seattle up-and-comers Beat Connection and La Luz are both on the list, as are locals The Digital Wild, Girl Pilot, Mirror Travel, Mother Falcon, Quiet Company, SPEAK, S U R V I V E, Whiskey Shivers, and The Zoltars. It’s going to be a strong year for Austin acts and in the coming months the international roster is sure to gain even more must-see headliners. You can view the full list here.

Khattie Q, the badass guitarist and vocalist of local punk faves BLXPLTN, recently went through a medical ordeal that found her taking an unwanted ambulance ride that landed her some even more unwanted hospital bills. Which is why some friends have put together a GiveForward campaign to help her with her expenses. If you’ve got money to pitch in, Khattie would very much appreciate it, and for all you other local musicians out there, don’t forget that in Austin, HAAM has your back for medical insurance issues.

This weekend, local app start-up Joynt is launching with a collaboration with Juiceland and several great Austin acts, including Emily Bell, Megafauna, Gina Chavez and Quiet Company, allowing visitors to Juiceland to get new recordings by these acts on their smartphones. Anyone who adds Joynt to their phone and goes to any Juiceland location and checks in through the app receives the content and on top of that, Juiceland will donate 50 cents from each purchase to ECHO, a local non-profit dedicated to ending chronic homelessness in Austin. Also taking part in this launch is the Venus Illuminato, who will be playing our free day party at Holy Mountain on Sunday, so be sure to stop by after you get your free download!